SEASONAL UNEMPLOYMENT: Unemployment is caused by relatively regular and predictable declines in particular industries or occupations over the course of a year, often corresponding with the seasons. Unlike cyclical unemployment, that could occur at any time, seasonal unemployment is an essential part of many jobs. For example, your regular, run-of-the-mill, department store Santa Clause can count on 11 months of unemployment each year. Seasonal unemployment is one of four unemployment sources. The other three are cyclical unemployment, frictional unemployment, and structural unemployment.

FOREIGN TRADE: Exchange of goods and services between countries. The inclination for one country to trade with another is based in large part on the idea of comparative advantage--which says that any country, no matter how technologically disadvantaged it might be, can always find some sort of good that will let it enter the game of foreign trade. In this sense, foreign trade is just an extension of the production, exchange, and consumption that's a fundamental part of life. The only difference with foreign trade is that producers and consumers reside in separate countries.

The official item in the National Income and Product Accounts maintained by the Bureau of Economics Analysis that measures household consumption expenditures on gross domestic product. Personal consumption expenditures are far and away the largest and most stable of the four expenditures, averaging about 65 to 70 percent of gross domestic product. The other official expenditures included in the National Income and Product Accounts are gross private domestic investment, government consumption expenditures and gross investment, and net exports of goods and services.

Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time searching the newspaper want ads seeking to buy either a rechargeable battery for your cell phone or a T-shirt commemorating the 2000 Olympics. Be on the lookout for letters from the Internal Revenue Service.Your Complete Scope